by Timothy Lea
‘We were wondering if you could show us the—er, your product in action, Mr. Ishowi.’
‘Ah so. Regrettably no. Projector has suffered a breakdown.’
‘Projector?’ I turn to Sidney.
‘Mr. Ishowi has a demonstration film of the –’ Sidney lowers his voice, ‘Nuggett.’
‘You mean, you’ve never seen a real one?’
‘Well, you can hardly expect Mr. Ishowi to travel round Europe with his nieces and a multipurpose cleaner, can you?’
‘No, but Sidney –’ The funny look starts coming into Mr. Ishowi’s eyes again and I too lower my voice. ‘You haven’t signed anything have you?’
‘The first assignment is on its way at the moment. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr. Ishowi?’
Mr. Ishowi has been craning his head forward at an angle which makes it difficult to keep him out of our conversation, and he nods enthusiastically.
‘Any day they should arrive. Provided, of course, that you do not have any of your naughty dock strikes. Oh dear, I hate to see the tail of the old lion being twisted. We have no dock strikes in Japan. We strike first – hah so!’
Well, I don’t reckon it was one of the strongest coffee tables ever made but the way Ishowi’s mit goes through it you would think it was made of ice cream wafers.
‘He’s a very interesting bloke, isn’t he?’ says Sid later when Mr. Ishowi has gone off to see if his nieces would like a walk along the promenade – they can’t have done because he does not come down again until after lunch which he takes in his room – tomato salad and a bottle of scotch.
‘Yeah, very interesting, Sid,’ I say. ‘But there’s something a bit funny about him, isn’t there?’
‘Yeah, I thought that,’ says Sidney thoughtfully. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it though.’
‘Well,’ I say, taking a deep breath, ‘it occurred to me, reading between the lines, that he might be a raving nutter.’
‘Timmy!’
‘Well, honestly Sid. How many blokes do you know who go around chopping up coffee tables with their bare hands?’
Sid immediately takes umbrage. ‘I used to know a bloke who could straighten horse shoes. He used to come down to the Highwayman on Friday night. You remember him, Timmo?’
‘It’s not quite the same thing,’ I say wearily, ‘he was a professional. This bloke – well. Are you sure he was on our side during the war?’
‘Course he was. Mind you I think it was a decision that caused him a lot of soul-searching. That, maybe, is why he seems a little strange sometimes. Also, of course, he’s Japanese. Their ways are different to ours you know, Timmo.’
‘I’m learning. Look, Sidney, are you sure you aren’t taking a bit too much for granted? I mean, you’ve never even seen the bloody cleaner.’
‘The Nuggett,’ prompts Sidney.
‘Yeah. The Nugget. You haven’t seen it, have you?’
‘I’ve seen this film and it looks fantastic, Timmo.’
‘But can you go by that?’
‘I reckon it’s worth a try out. I’m only taking twenty thousand.’
‘Twenty thousand!’
‘That’s nothing, Timmo. They sell hundreds of thousands of vacuum cleaners every year. We’re only going for a small percentage of the market.’
‘You mean I’m going for a small percentage of the market. Blimey, if I tried up every wholesaler in the country I don’t reckon I could flog twenty thousand.’
‘You’re not on your own, Timmo.’
‘You mean I’ve got you behind me? Thanks a lot. I’d feel safer with the massed bands of the Gay Liberation Front.’
‘I wasn’t referring to my own support.’
‘I never knew you wore one, Sidney.’
‘Don’t be coarse, Timmo. I was alluding to the Daughters of the Cherry Blossom.’
‘You’ve done a tie up with the boot polish people? I didn’t know they made a floor polish.’
‘No, Timmo, no.’ Sidney sounds as if it is an effort to control himself. ‘You know how, over here, they have teams of birds who go around banging on doors and offering to wash your smalls for three weeks?’
‘I know what you mean, Sidney. “Have you got a packet of Sudso”? That kind of thing.’
‘Exactly, Timmo. Well, we had the idea, actually it was Mr. Ishowi’s idea really, that it would be a good gimmick if we could get a team of Japanese bints going around to promote the product. Luckily, Mr. Ishowi’s nieces have a lot of friends who have always wanted to see the West and we decided this would be a wonderful opportunity to combine business with pleasure. Shrewd, huh?’
‘Very shrewd. Sidney. And the female angle is good as well. You don’t associate Geisha girls with anything nasty, do you?’
‘Exactly, Timmo. It’s all flower arrangements and tea ceremonies, isn’t it? None of the bash-bash last one through the side of the battleship is a cissy stuff. I think that this way we stand to get the best out of the Japanese tie up.’
‘Yeah. If Mr. Ishy can keep his karate chop under control we might just be onto something. When do the birds get here?’
‘With any luck they should be down tonight. I’m awaiting a call from the airport now.’
Exciting, isn’t it. I have never had the chance to chat up any oriental frippet and now it seems I am going to be knee deep in them. Twelve are coming, according to Sidney. He is not quite certain how many of them speak English but he says the ones that can’t can go around with me as a sort of mobile window dressing. I must say that having a real Nippon bint to demonstrate the ‘Nugget’, should work wonders with the trade. They are so docile and obedient, aren’t they? Not like Rose Dunchurch and her lot. That’s the trouble with English bints. They’ve had it too easy for too long. We’re getting like the Yanks. Now, in Japan the birds are brought up to worship their menfolk; which is as it should be, of course. A woman is much happier if she has an interest in life and what could be better than keeping her old man well supplied with steak and kidney pudding and freshly darned socks? All this women’s lib nonsense gets right up my bracket. They can start sewing up the slits in their y-fronts right away as far as I am concerned. What a relief it will be to meet a few women who know their place.
It is while churning these thoughts round my mind that I notice two thick-set schoolgirls coming into the hotel bar. They have the kind of straight-line haircuts that belong to the Woodentops, and as I snatch a second butchers at their flattened mugs, it occurs to me that it could only have been their gym slips that persuaded me that they were female. They are what you might call chunky and I am about to avert my mincepies to better things, e.g. just about anything, when Mr. Ishowi comes in and addresses them in a voice like someone gargling with the water dad leaves his dentures in. Could it be? No! It can’t! But wait – is it possible? On reflection these two moon-faced monstrosities must be Ishy’s nieces. What a carve-up! Twelve more like that and I am chucking the job in. All you could sell with those two is dark glasses.
I try and duck down behind my menu card but – too late! Ishy has seen me.
‘Ah so!’ he says, scuttling towards me and pushing the ugly sisters in front of him. ‘I take the opportunity of introducing my nieces, Pearl Diver and Apple Blossom.’
The Pearl Diver I remember was a racehorse that won the Derby and I reckon I could win the Derby if I had that bint behind me. The reflection from her gnashers could put the local lighthouse out of business. As for Apple Blossom. She looks more like a Granny Smith that got nipped by an early frost. A more repulsive duo I have not seen since Sidney and my sister Rosie played in the vicar’s production of Cinderella – and the ugly sisters were not so hot either.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ I say extending a hand which both birds pump up and down as if they expect water to come gushing out of my mouth. ‘How are you finding it over here?’
It seems a pretty innocent remark to me but the birds turn to each other and dissolve into Minny Mouse giggles.
‘
Finding what? Naughty man,’ snaps Apple Blossom, giving me a playful jab in the solar plexus with her right elbow which doubles me up against the out of work juke box.
‘Life generally,’ I gasp, thinking how much they take after their uncle.
‘We flind no life yet but we have hopes.’
‘Maybe you clan help us?’ says Pearl Diver.
‘What did you have in mind?’ I say guardedly.
‘We cannot flind vlolley-ball court in hotel.’
‘Volley-ball?’
‘My nieces nearly make Japanese Olympic Team,’ says Ishy proudly. ‘Volley-ball very big lady’s game in Japan.’
‘But you don’t have any very big ladies in Japan, do you?’ I say.
‘You make terrible English joke,’ says Apple Blossom angrily. ‘Japanese ladies team best in world. We train very hard.’
And before I can say anything she dives onto the floor as if it is water. Hardly have I flinched away from this distressing sight than the other one starts raining karate chops on the edge of the bar and making loud ‘yoh hoh’!! noises which seem to be coming up from her belly in a slow lift.
Now, I know one is British and tries to turn a blind eye to anything untoward – but really! It is a bit much, isn’t it? Especially with the hotel full of senior citizens. They are not used to that kind of thing.
‘Bloater Bottom! – I mean Lotus Bosom – I mean Apple Blossom!’ I squeal, ‘girls, please!’ I am getting dead worried because I can see that nasty glint coming into Ishy’s eyes again. It only needs him to start carving the place up and we could have an international incident on our hands. Luckily, he must suddenly think about those twenty thousand Klamikazi Monsoonbreakers because he makes a noise like someone hawking up half a halibut and the girls spring to their muscular little feet before you can say Hara Kari.
‘Their enthusiasm knows no bounds,’ he says affectionately. ‘All that energy needs to find an outlet.’ I do not like the way he looks me up and down when he says that and Pearl Diver’s skittish giggle sends cold shivers down my spine. I would not fancy being alone with those birds when they could not find their volley-ball, I can tell you.
I confide my fears to Sidney later that evening, but he is not swift to offer promises of support in an emergency.
‘I know they’re not very lovely,’ he says, ‘but they are Mr. Ishowi’s nieces. I’d like you to remember that. We don’t want this deal to fall through because you played hard to get.’
‘Are you kidding, Sidney? Are you seriously expecting me to tangle with those two karate kittens? You’ll be cementing the deal with my mangled body if you do.’
‘Don’t try and make it sound too attractive,’ grins Sidney. ‘Why don’t you take them out for a spot of ten-pin bowling?’
‘Because they wouldn’t roll the balls down the lane, they’d chuck them!’
‘You’re too harsh on them,’ says Sid. ‘They’re just like the girls next door really.’
‘If they were, I’d be round at Australia House tomorrow morning. Don’t waste your time, Sid. I’m not getting within ten paces of those birds without an armed guard.’
I believe that, but do you believe it? Of course you don’t. And you are dead right. At ten-thirty that evening a call comes down from Mr. Ishowi’s suite for a bottle of scotch to be sent up. I thought they all drank saki, but maybe we don’t have any.
‘I’ll take it up,’ I say cheerfully. ‘I need the exercise.’ When I remember those words later I could weep.
I bound up the stairs and give a sharp tap on the door. Not a sausage. Perhaps Ishy is in the bathroom. Best to go in and leave the scotch. I knock again and open the door. There is no one about so I put the tray down on a table and am about to leave when the bathroom door opens. What comes out makes me whip the smile off my face faster than a flasher getting his old man out as the Flying Scot goes past.
Pearl Diver, or maybe it is Apple Blossom, there is little to choose between them, is revealed wearing a kind of shorty towelling dressing gown, sawn off at the knee – which is where it looks as if her legs have been sawn off. When she sees me her eyes light up.
‘Ah so. Playtime has clum,’ she says. ‘Look sister. Mr. Lea has arrived to glive us work out.’ Oh no, he hasn’t, I think to myself – but too late. The other nauseating nip bounds out of the bathroom wrapping an identical dressing gown to that worn by her sister across her flat chest. Did I say ‘flat’? You could put a marble between her nipples and it would have nowhere to roll.
‘Gloody, gloody,’ she says, ‘now we can flind out if all those stories about Englishmen are true.’ If she means the ones about them being able to run very fast in an emergency she is dead right. I am heading for the door in Olympic qualifying time, but alas! These girls must have had lots of experience of blokes trying to do a bunk and they are not sluggish themselves.
Crump! Something thuds against my back and the door knob becomes a dream rather than a reality. I am knocked sideways and before I can repair my balance, Pearl Diver is between me and the door. She picks up a football sized object which I assume must be a volley-ball and bounces it playfully off my nut.
‘Naughty boy!’ she chides. ‘Blad manners to turn your black on a lady.’
‘I just remembered, I left the bathroom jap on—I mean, tap on,’ I bleat. ‘Please, girls. Let’s have a game tomorrow. By that time I can be out of the country—I mean, out of this terrible depressed state I’ve sunk into. Do you ever get –’
‘Slut up!’ barks Apple Blossom. ‘You talk too mluch. Let’s have some action. You are blig strong bloy.’
She bounces the ball off my bonce again and I see red – well, yellow and red. Am I a man or a mlouse – I mean mouse? Am I going to let two gnat-sized nips with faces that look as if they have been traced on steamed up window panes tell me what to do? Of course I am not.
‘Out of my way, girls,’ I say firmly, ‘I am going out of that door.’ I take a step forward and— ‘EEE YOW!!’ Why is the chandelier growing out of the middle of the floor? Why are all the pictures hanging upside down? After a pause for reflection which I notice is also upside down, I come to the conclusion that I have been nobbled by a spot of the deadly ju jitsu. But this is ridiculous! Those birds would have to stand on each other’s shoulders to post a letter. How can they throw six foot one and a half inches of red blooded Englishman around? They are not slow to show me. ‘EEE YA YOW ! ! !’ Again I take a quick spin round the room, and this time I am not in such a hurry to get up.
‘Girls, please!’ I groan. ‘I slender. I slender!’ I am trying to get over ‘surrender’, see. Clever, isn’t it?
‘You very corpulent,’ says Apple Blossom severely. ‘You need exercise. Now, take off tlousers.’
‘NO!’
But they are strong these girls. Make no mistake about that. As I struggle desperately they pin me down and I can almost hear the ref counting. ‘One, two, three’ – there go my shoes and socks, ‘four, five, six’, trousers hurled across the room, ‘seven, eight, nine’, ladies, please! Their strong fingers are folding round the rim of my y-fronts. ‘Help! Help!’ I did not know I could shout so loudly. Don’t let them get me. What have I ever done to hurt anybody? I am too young to go like this. ‘Help! Help!’ Suddenly, just as I fear that I am doomed, the door bursts open and Sidney appears at the head of a crowd of gawping octogenarians.
‘Sidney! Save me, save me,’ I slobber gratefully.
‘Just having little workout,’ says Apple Blossom meekly.
‘That’s not all they were having out!’ I holler. ‘Let me go.’ I shake myself free of their thwarted hands and start picking up my clothes.
‘Come, come, Timothy,’ says Sidney reproachfully. ‘Our Japanese friends were only looking for a spot of exercise.’
‘Right! You give it to them,’ I say. ‘I fancy you as a volley-ball player.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Glood idea,’ chirps Pearl Diver.
‘Right – that’s
settled.’ I start pushing the senior citizens out of the room.
‘Hey, but wait –!’
I close the door on Sidney’s protests and hear the key turn almost immediately.
‘Physiotherapy?’ says one old dear innocently.
‘Something like that,’ I tell him. ‘Now don’t hang about outside the door. You might rupture your eardrums.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘How do you feel, Sidney?’
‘I don’t think I will ever feel anything again.’
It is the next morning and Sid is looking decidedly the worse for wear. His features are blurred like a kid’s painting that has had a pot of water spilt over it.
‘Had a hard time of it, did you?’
‘Judas,’ snarls Sid, ‘how could you leave me alone with those two?’
‘What do you mean! You were the one who was telling me what nice girls they were.’
‘You took advantage of me.’
‘Come off it, Sid. Like I’ve said before, you were hoisted with your own pederast.’
‘All right, all right. I misjudged them. But what worries me is: supposing the rest of them are like that?’
‘A team of Japanese volley-ball players, you mean?’
‘Don’t!’ Sid buries his head in his hands.
‘And when are we going to see the product?’
‘Don’t keep on. I’m expecting them any day.’
‘And you’ve got work permits and all that kind of thing?’
‘Of course I have. I’m not a fool!’
Sidney is obviously on edge so I leave him alone and concentrate on keeping away from Pearl Diver and Apple Blossom. I have not asked him what they did to him but it was noticeable that he had his legs crossed all the time he was talking to me.
To my surprise a much cheerier Sid comes bounding up at eleven o’clock and tells me that the first batch of ‘Nuggets’ – I am now getting used to the name – has arrived at a nearby warehouse, and that Mr. Ishowi is all lined up to give us a demo.